Bennington College is a liberal arts college
located in Bennington, Vermont.
Overview
Bennington College was founded in 1932 as a women's college focusing on arts,
sciences, and humanities. It became co-educational in
1969. The campus was once a working dairy farm, and still affords a beautiful view of the
Green Mountains. The college has long been known as a leader in progressive,
student-centered education, with particular strengths in the creative and performing arts. The college's educational philosophy
encourages students to discover and develop individual academic passions and lines of inquiry, to work closely with faculty
members in tutorials and seminars, and to take responsibility for their own educations and lives.
Bennington in the media
The New York Times recently recognized Bennington as "one of the country's top private colleges" [1], while Forbes.com observed that it was "high on prestige and low on
student-teacher ratios" [2]. The Princeton Review lists
Bennington as one of the "Best Colleges in the Northeast," and notes the high frequency of class discussions, the acceptance of
gay students on campus, and the beauty of the student houses [3].
Bennington ranks 106th on US News Magazine's most recent list of top
liberal arts schools[1], though like other members of the
Annapolis Group, Bennington may refuse to participate in future US News ranking reports
[2]. Bennington's endowment is less than $12,000,000, fifth
among private colleges in Vermont. Founded in the Great
Depression, Bennington has historically been underfunded, though the college has worked to address this issue in recent
years. During the late 1980s, Bennington was the most expensive college or university in the United States[3]; as of 2006, it was the seventh most expensive.[4] As with many of its peer institutions, Bennington's high tuition is largely the
result of its small endowment.
In the fall of 2004 Bennington students made headlines when they protested the college's
crackdown on campus nudity.[5] Bennington also made
national news in 2005 when dance students Kelly Muzzi and Laura Jawitz were rehearsing in a
second-story studio and crashed through a plate-glass window, falling onto a brick patio. Muzzi died. Jawitz was seriously hurt.
The college later reached a settlement with Jawitz, and established a Safety Fund and Memorial Garden in honor of Muzzi.
More recently, the college has attracted positive notice for its plans to convert to more ecologically friendly and efficient
forms of heating [4] and for the publication of critically-acclaimed new books by faculty members
Steven Bach and Allen Shawn.
Alumna Kiran Desai '93 recently won the famed Man Booker Prize for her novel The
Inheritance of Loss[5], while Alan Arkin '55 won an Academy Award in 2007 for his role in Little Miss Sunshine [6].
Jennings, the college's music building.
Dewey and Canfield, two of the college's older student housing facilities.
Educational style
At Bennington, students plan their own courses of study through a series of meetings with faculty members, and by writing
reflective essays where they set out specific questions and areas of interest to pursue over their four years. Students clarify
and refine their lines of inquiry throughout the Plan Process. Some students focus in one discipline, while many chose to combine
their interests in more than one subject; others create Plans around central concepts that may draw from several disciplines.
Though there is no "core curriculum" of required classes at Bennington, students choosing to focus in particular fields are
encouraged to take certain classes, or a certain amount of credits in the field. Plan Meetings are attended by the student's
Faculty Advisor and a small selection (normally two or three, but sometimes four or even five) of faculty members who may or may
not be a part of the student's chosen discipline. Students can request changes to be made to their Plan Meeting rosters.
Main subjects taught at Bennington include: Social Sciences and Humanities,
Dance, Drama, Theater Arts, Music
Performance and Composition, Life and
Physical Sciences, Literature and Writing, Teacher Education (Center for Creative
Teaching), Foreign Language Arts (Isabelle Kaplan Center for Languages and Culture), Visual Arts (ceramics, painting, sculpture, drawing,
photography, architecture), Video and Media Studies.
Students are held accountable for their work by close critique and review by faculty and peers rather than traditional letter
grades. Bennington offers narrative evaluations rather than a graded scale as the
default option for undergraduate performance review, believing them to be a more detailed and useful account of student work.
According to the official college website, "all students are encouraged to consider requesting grades for at least two years (or
64 credits) of their study at Bennington so that a GPA might be produced upon graduation." There are no competitive sports teams,
fraternities or sororities, ROTC, or school mascots.
Bennington is run on a three-term system in which students work on campus for the Fall and Spring terms and complete a 7-week,
210 hour "Field Work Term" during the winter. During this time the campus is mostly closed, and students must seek internships
and housing off campus (paid jobs are allowed). On-campus housing is closed from mid-December until March. The Field Work Term
office offers many different venues of help for finding and securing jobs. For one full Field Work Term or two half-Field Work
Terms, students are allowed to participate in an "Independent Study," which can range from starting an entrepreneurial business
to working on one's Senior Project.
Bennington has been part of the SAT optional movement for
undergraduate admission since 2006.
History
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The college's newest student housing, completed in 1999.
The Symposium
In 1993, the Bennington College Board of Trustees initiated a process known as "The Symposium". Arguing that the college
suffered from "a growing attachment to the status quo that, if unattended, is lethal to Bennington’s purpose and
pedagogy"[6], the Board of Trustees "solicit[ed]...concerns
and proposals on a wide and open-ended range of issues from every member of the faculty, every student, every staff member, every
alumna and alumnus, and dozens of friends of the College".[7] According to the Trustees, the process was intended to reinvent the college, and the Board allegedly
received over 600 contributions to this end.[8]
The results of this process were published in June 1994 in a 36-page document titled Symposium Report of the Bennington
College Board of Trustees. Among the changes recommended in the document were the adoption of a "teacher-practitioner"
ideal[9]; the abandonment of academic divisions in favor of
"polymorphous, dynamically changing Faculty Program Groups"[10]; the replacement of the college's system of presumptive tenure with "an experimental contract
system"[11]; and a ten-percent tuition reduction over the
following five years.[12]
Shortly thereafter, near the end of June 1994, 27 faculty members -- approximately one-third of the total faculty body -- were
notified by certified mail that their contracts would not be renewed.[13] (The exact number of fired faculty members is listed as 25 or 26 in some reports, a discrepancy
partly due to the fact that at least one faculty member, photographer Neil Rappaport, was reinstated on appeal shortly after his
firing.)[14] As indicated in the Symposium, the Trustees
also abolished the presumptive tenure system, leaving the institution with no form of tenure
whatsoever.
The firings attracted considerable media attention, and sparked student and alumni protests, as well as censure by the
American Association of University Professors [7], who
alleged that "...academic freedom is insecure, and academic tenure is nonexistent today at Bennington College."[15] Critics of the Symposium, and the 1994 firings, have alleged
that the Symposium was essentially a sham, designed to provide a pretext for the removal of faculty members to whom the college's
president, Elizabeth Coleman, was hostile.[16] Some have
questioned the timing of the firings, arguing that by waiting until the end of June, the college made it impossible for students
affected by the firings to transfer to other institutions.[17]
In response, President Coleman said that the decision was fundamentally "about ideas", stating that "Bennington became
mediocre over time" and that the college was in need of radical change.[18] In addition, Coleman argued that the college was in dire financial straits, saying that "had
Bennington done nothing...the future of this institution was seriously in doubt."[19] In a letter to the New York Times, John Barr, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, asserted that
Coleman was "not responsible for the redesign of the college...It was the board of trustees"[20].
For the 1994-1995 academic year, in the immediate wake of the controversy, the college's enrollment dropped to a record low of
370 undergraduates[21], while in the following year
(1995-1996), undergraduate enrollment declined further, to 285.[22][23] According to President
Coleman, a student body of 600 undergraduates was required for the college to break even.[24] Over the following years, however, enrollment slowly increased, reaching 500
students in 2002[25], and 600 in 2004.[26]
In May 1996, seventeen of the faculty members terminated in the 1994 firings filed a lawsuit against Bennington College,
seeking $3.7 million in damages and reinstatement to their former positions.[27] In December 2000, the case was settled out of court; as part of the settlement, the fired faculty
members received $1.89 million and an apology from the college.[28]
Since the Symposium years, the college's situation has improved considerably due to multi-million dollar gifts from
Bennington's earliest classes [8] [9], increased enrollment, and accelerated campus renewal efforts[10].
Graduate Program in Writing
Bennington College is home to a low residency MFA program in writing; The Atlantic
recently named it one of the nation's best [11]. Core faculty include fiction writers David
Gates, Amy Hempel, Jill McCorkle, Sheila Kohler, Martha Cooley, Askold
Melnyczuk, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, and Alice Mattison;
nonfiction writers Sven Birkerts, Susan Cheever,
Phillip Lopate, Tom Bissell, and George Scialabba; and poets April Bernard, Major Jackson, Timothy Liu, Amy
Gerstler, and Ed Ochester. The Writing Seminars are also beginning a program in
screenwriting in January 2008. Screenwriting faculty include Kevin McCarthy and
Coleman Hugh. The Writing Seminars were founded by poet Liam
Rector. Following Rector's death in August 2007, Sven Birkerts took over as acting
director of the Writing Seminars while the school launched a nationwide search for a replacement for Rector.
Notable alumni and faculty
-
Among the more notable of Bennington's alumni are: Donna Tartt, Andrea Dworkin, Kathleen Norris (poet), Susan Crile, Merce Cunningham, Kiran
Desai, Bret Easton Ellis, Michael
Pollan, Helen Frankenthaler, Tim Daly,
Holland Taylor and Jonathan Lethem.
Notable current and former faculty include essayist Edward Hoagland, novelists
Bernard Malamud and John Gardner, music composer
Allen Shawn, painter Jules Olitski, politician
Mac Maharaj, sculptor Anthony Caro,
dancer/choreographer Martha Graham, jazz musician Milford
Graves, and a number of Pulitzer Prize-winning poets including Stanley Kunitz, Mary Oliver, Theodore Roethke, and Anne Waldman.
Bennington College in fiction
Bennington has been fictionalized as Camden College in novels by alumnus Bret Easton
Ellis. Other writers from Bennington include Jill Eisenstadt, and Jonathan
Lethem. Donna Tartt, also a Bennington alumna, set her 1992 novel The Secret History at the fictional Hampden College, which bears a strong resemblance to
Bennington.
References
- ^ Waller, John (August 18, 2007). Bennington, SVC left raw by
rankings.
- ^ Press release: President Coleman Discusses US News and World Report Rankings with Vermont Public
Radio.
- ^ MIT is most expensive.
- ^ Top 10 Most Expensive College.
- ^
McKenna, Holly (December 9, 2004), "Vermont college students
fight to bare all", Seattle Times: p. A2
- ^
Symposium Report of the Bennington College Board of Trustees, 1994, pp.
7, <http://www.bennington.edu/SiteObjects/published/02945FCE02D95EE90105BBF51F602969/02945FCE02D95EE90108537718E24296/file/SymposiumReport.pdf>.
Retrieved on 2007-07-07
- ^ Symposium Report, p. 8.
- ^ Symposium Report, p. 8.
- ^ Symposium Report, p. 11.
- ^ Symposium Report, p. 14.
- ^ Symposium Report, p. 17.
- ^ Symposium Report, p. 22.
- ^
Edmundson, Mark (Oct. 23, 1994), "Bennington means business",
New York Times: p. 1 [Section 6, Col. 1]
- ^
Dembner, Alice (April 15, 1995), "National professors' group
calls Bennington overhaul a 'purge'", Boston Globe: p. 22 [Metro-Region section]
- ^
Howie, Stephen S. (May 5, 2002), "Bennington makes recovery its own
way: President is credited with setting the course", Boston Globe: p. B11 [Education section]
- ^ Edmundson, "Bennington means business".
- ^
Dembner, Alice (Sept. 14, 1994), "Striking a discord: Record
low enrollment follows radical changes at Bennington College", Boston Globe: p. 1 [Metro-Region
section]
- ^ Edmundson, "Bennington means business".
- ^
"Change begins at Bennington", St. Louis Post-Dispatch: p. 12C,
June 28, 1994
- ^
"Bennington means business (letter response)", New York Times:
p. 22 [Section 6, Col. 4], Nov. 27, 1994
- ^ Dembner, "Striking a discord".
- ^ Howie, "Bennington makes recovery its own way".
- ^
June, Audrey Williams (October 22, 2004), "Bond-Rating Update",
Chronicle of Higher Education: p. 40
- ^ Dembner, "Striking a discord".
- ^ Howie, "Bennington makes recovery its own way".
- ^ June, "Bond-rating update".
- ^
Yemma, John (May 8, 1996), "Laid-off Bennington faculty members
sue", Boston Globe: p. 32
- ^
"17 Dismissed Professors Win Suit at
Bennington", New York Times: p. 16 [Section A, Column 1], Dec. 29, 2000; corrected Jan. 1, 2001
See also
External links
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